Friday, December 20, 2024

hopi

 







Ramson Lomatewama



Wednesday, December 18, 2024

water song

 




www.singthewatersong.com

Grandmother NANCY ANDRY
Grandmother MARGARET BEHAN
Grandmother  CLARA SOARING HAWK




Navajo early morning blessing

 







~ "Hooghan" from the album Sacred Mountains by Louie Gonnie



Monday, December 16, 2024

all these prayers

 






So a little spring prays to the ocean, 
so the beating heart prays to the heart of the universe, 
so the little word prays to the great Logos,
 so a dust speck prays to the earth, 
so the earth prays to the cosmos, 
so the one prays to the billion, 
so human love prays to God’s love, 
so always prays to never, 
so the moment prays to eternity, 
so the snowflake prays to winter, 
so the frightened beast prays to the forest silence, 
so uncertainty prays to beauty itself.

And all these prayers are heard.




~ Anna Kamieńska
from In the Great River: A Notebook
with thanks to love is a place


Sunday, December 15, 2024

with gratitude

 





in the wordless beginning
iguana & myrrh
magma & reef ghost moth
& the cordyceps tickling its nerves
& cedar & archipelago & anemone
dodo bird & cardinal waiting for its red
ocean salt & crude oil now black
muck now most naïve fumbling plankton
every egg clutched in the copycat soft
of me unwomaned unraced
unsexed as the ecstatic prokaryote
that would rage my uncle’s blood
or the bacterium that will widow
your eldest daughter’s eldest son
my uncle, her son our mammoth sun
& her uncountable siblings & dust mite & peat
apatosaurus & nile river
& maple green & nude & chill-blushed &
yeasty keratined bug-gutted i & you
spleen & femur seven-year refreshed
seven-year shedding & taking & being this dust
& my children & your children
& their children & the children
of the black bears & gladiolus & pink florida grapefruit
here not allied but the same perpetual breath
held fast to each other as each other’s own skin
cold-dormant & rotting & birthing & being born
in the olympus of the smallest
possible once before once




~ Marissa Davis
Singularity
art by Joan Sokolowska
with thanks to The Marginalian




Saturday, December 14, 2024

you are the fullness of perfection here and now

 






I can see with the utmost clarity that you have never been, 
nor are, nor will be estranged from reality, 
that you are the fullness of perfection here and now,
 and that nothing can deprive you of your heritage, 
of what you are. 

You are in no way different from me, only you do not know it.
 Be fully aware of your own being, 
and you will be in bliss consciously.
 Because you take your mind off yourself 
and make it dwell on what you are not,
 you lose your sense of well-being, 
of being well.

You people do not know how much you miss
 by not knowing your own true self.

The moment you know your real being, 
you are afraid of nothing. 
Death gives freedom and power. 
To be free in the world, 
you must die to the world. 
Then the universe is your own,
 it becomes your body,
 an expression and a tool. 

The happiness of being absolutely free is beyond description.

His state tastes of the pure, uncaused, undiluted bliss. 
He is happy and fully aware that happiness
 is his very nature and that he need not do anything,
 nor strive for anything to secure it. It follows him,
 more real than the body, nearer than the mind itself. 

To me, dependence on anything for happiness is utter misery.
 Pleasure and pain have causes, 
while my state is my own,
 totally uncaused, 
independent,
 unassailable.

As he gets older, 
he grows more and more happy and peaceful.
 After all, he is going home.
 Like a traveler nearing his destination and collecting his luggage,
 he leaves the train without regret. 
The reel of destiny is coming to its end
—the mind is happy. 
The mist of bodily existence is lifting—
the burden of the body is growing less from day to day.




~ Nisargadatta Maharaj
 from I AM THAT...
art by Oskar Hokeah

Friday, December 13, 2024

a mustard seed






Become as a child,
become deaf, become blind!
Your own substance
must become nothingness;
drive all substance, all nothingness far from you!
Leave space, leave time,
eschew also all physical representation.
Go without a way
the narrow footpath,
then you will succeed in finding the desert.


 ~ Anonymous
(excerpt from Granum Sinapis)
  found here in for lovers of god everywhere 
by roger housden



toward emptiness






In the desert,
Turn toward emptiness,
Fleeing the self.

Stand alone
Ask no one's help,
And your being will quiet,
Free from the bondage of things.

Those who cling to the world,
endeavor to free them;
Those who are free, praise.
Care for the sick,
But live alone,
Happy to drink from the waters of sorrow,
To kindle Love's fire
With the twigs of a simple life.

Thus you will live in the desert.




Mechtild of Magdeburg
translation by Jane Hirshfield



Thursday, December 12, 2024

the last cloud drains away

 






The birds have vanished down the sky.

Now the last cloud drains away.



We sit together, the mountain and me,

until only the mountain remains.




 Li Po,
  from Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain
 translated by Sam Hamill
 from Crossing the Yellow River: 
Three Hundred Poems from the Chinese



Monday, December 9, 2024

home








Whether drifting through life on a boat or 
climbing toward old age leading a horse, 
each day is a journey and the journey itself is home. 


~ Basho



my heart leaps up!

 




The child is father of the man;
And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety.
(Wordsworth, "My Heart Leaps Up")

...

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

...

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;

We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind;
In the primal sympathy
Which having been must ever be;
In the soothing thoughts that spring
Out of human suffering;
In the faith that looks through death,

In years that bring the philosophic mind.
And O, ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves,
Forebode not any severing of our loves!
Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might;
I only have relinquished one delight
To live beneath your more habitual sway.
I love the Brooks which down their channels fret,
Even more than when I tripped lightly as they;
The innocent brightness of a new-born Day

Is lovely yet;
The Clouds that gather round the setting sun
Do take a sober colouring from an eye
That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality;
Another race hath been, and other palms are won.
Thanks to the human heart by which we live,
Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears,
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.


~ William Wordsworth
excerpts from Ode Intimations of Immortality
 from Recollections of Early Childhood
art by Kathryn Jacobi Studio







Wednesday, December 4, 2024

barn's burnt down -- now I can see the moon. - Mizuta Masahide

 





Amor Fati
(love of fate)
The time is now past when accidents could befall me; 
and what could now fall to my lot
 which would not already be my own!

~ Nietzsche
from Thus Spake Zarathustra

...

It is said that before entering the sea
A river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has travelled,
from the peaks of the mountains, 
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, 
that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.

But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.
Nobody can go back.

To go back is impossible in existence.

The river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean
 because only then will fear disappear
 because that’s where the river will know
 it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
 but of becoming the ocean.



~ Khalil Gibran

Sunday, November 24, 2024

experiencing peace and clarity within

 






~ Rupert Spira

Saturday, November 23, 2024

the beauty way - joy - happiness - confidence - peace









the Dine way

 



Friday, November 22, 2024

lightening the burden

 





The siren's song -
"Be more than you are,
be everything you're not."

.
The sages say,
"Be less, not more,"
because all that we're not
lightens the burden,
delighting without hope
our desiring hearts.
.



~ Joseph Goldstein
from Dreamscapes of the Mind,
Poems and Reflections



Wednesday, November 20, 2024

the world is myself

 





In the mirror of your mind images appear and disappear.
 The mirror remains.

 Learn to distinguish the immovable in the movable,
 the unchanging in the changing,
 till you realise that all differences are in appearance only
 and oneness is a fact.

 This basic identity -- you may call God,
 or Brahman, or the matrix (Prakriti),
 the words matters little -- 
is only the realisation that all is one.

Once you can say with confidence born from direct experience:
 'I am the world, the world is myself','

you are free from desire and fear on one hand 
and become totally responsible for the world
 on the other. 

The senseless sorrow of mankind
 becomes your sole concern.





~ Excerpts from I Am That 
by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj


Sunday, November 17, 2024

may all beings be happy

 




Perhaps nothing more fully expresses the spirit of Jennifer’s lifework
 than the recent performances of “Song For All Beings." 
A large-scale multimedia cirque de spirit, 
these events featured over 100 artists
 and included Bruce Cockburn, Joanna Macy,
 Ferron, Jack Kornfield, Anam Thubten Rinpoche, 
Sarah Dugas, Raz Kennedy, and many others. 
Song For All Beings Live!
 was released as a DVD/video recording of the 2017 show.



In these Arms A Song for all Beings © (p) Jennifer Berezan I cannot turn my eyes, I cannot count the cost Of all that has been broken, all that has been lost I cannot understand, the suffering that life brings War and hate and hunger And a million other things When I've done all that I can And I try to do my part Let sorrow be a doorway Into an open heart And the light on the hills is full of mercy The wind in the trees it comes to save me This silence it will never desert me I long to hold the whole world in these arms May all beings be happy May all beings be safe May all beings everywhere be free



~ Jennifer Berezan
with thanks to When I was 69




Saturday, November 16, 2024

fall with me here







So it came time
for me to cede myself
and I chose
the wind
to be delivered to

The wind was glad
and said it needed all
the body
it could get
to show its motions with

and wanted to know
willingly as I hoped it would
if it could do
something in return
to show its gratitude

When the tree of my bones
rises from the skin I said
come and whirlwinding
stroll my dust
around the plain

so I can see
how the ocotillo does
and how saguaro-wren is
and when you fall
with evening

fall with me here
where we can watch
the closing up of day
and think how morning breaks






~ A. R. Ammons
photo by R Christopher Vest



 






where amazement and clear thought twine their slow growth into us


.




.
The most living moment comes when
those who love each other meet each
.
other's eyes and in what flows
between them then.  To see you face
.
in a crowd of others, or alone on a 
frightening street, I weep for that.
.
Our tears improve the earth.  The
time you scolded me, your gratitude,
.
your laughing, always your qualities
increase the soul.  Seeing you is a 
.
wine that does not muddle or numb.
We sit inside the cypress shadow
.
where amazement and clear thought
twine their slow growth into us.
.



~  Rumi
.

Friday, November 15, 2024

I would cease to be

 






God
dissolved
my mind - my separation.

I cannot describe now my intimacy with Him.

How dependent is you body's life on water and food and air?

I said to God, "I will always be unless you cease to Be,"

and my Beloved replied, "And I

would cease to Be

if you

died."




~ St. John of the Cross
from Love Poem from God
translation by Daniel Ladinsky
art by Daniel Taylor


Wednesday, November 13, 2024

beneath the ancient mountains tears

 





~ Tania
with thanks to Barbara @ When I was 69






Tuesday, November 12, 2024

losing yourself in love

 
 



 
 
Meditation provides a deeper appreciation 
of the inter-relatedness of all things
 and the part each person plays.
 The simple rules of this game are honesty
 with yourself about where you are in your life
 and learning to listen to hear how it is. 
 
Meditation is a way of listening more deeply,
 so you hear from a deeper space, exactly how it is.
 
 Meditation will help you quiet your mind, 
enhance your ability to be insightful and understanding
 and give you a sense of inner peace.

If you meditate regularly, even when you don’t feel like it, 
you will make great gains, for it will allow you to see
 how your thoughts impose limits on you.
 Your resistances to meditation are your mental prisons in miniature.

When I asked Maharajji how to meditate, he said, 
“Meditate like Christ.” 
I said, “Maharajji, how did Christ meditate?”
 He became very quiet and closed his eyes.
 After a few minutes,
 he had a blissful expression on his face 
and a tear trickled down his cheek. 
He opened his eyes and said, 
“He lost himself in Love.” 
Try the meditation of losing yourself in love…. 
 
 
 
 
~ Ram Dass

 

the weighing




The heart's reasons
seen clearly,
even the hardest
will carry
its whip-marks and sadness
and must be forgiven.

As the drought-starved
eland forgives
the drought-starved lion
who finally takes her,
enters willingly then
the life she cannot refuse,
and is lion, is fed,
and does not remember the other.

So few grains of happiness
measured against all the dark
and still the scales balance.

The world asks of us
only the strength we have and we give it.
Then it asks more, and we give it.




~ Jane Hirshfield




Monday, November 11, 2024

on the nature of awareness

 





~ Rupert Spira



Saturday, November 9, 2024

free 'here and now'

 





As long as there is the body and the sense of identity with the body, 
frustration is inevitable. 

All changes in consciousness are due to the "I-am-the-body" idea. 
Divested of this idea, the mind becomes steady. There is pure being, 
free of experiencing anything in particular. 

You are accustomed to dealing with things, physical and mental.
 I am not a thing, nor are you. We are neither matter nor energy,
 neither body nor mind. 

While alive, it [the body] attracts attention and fascinates
 so completely that rarely does one perceive one's real nature.
 It is like seeing the surface of the ocean
 and completely forgetting the immensity beneath.

As long as you take yourself to be a person,
 a body and a mind, 
separate from the stream of life,
 having a will of its own, 
pursuing its own aims, 
you are living merely on the surface, 
and whatever you do will be short-lived 
and of little value.

When you desire and fear, and identify yourself with your feelings, 
you create sorrow and bondage. When you create, with love and wisdom, 
and remain unattached to your creations, 
the result is harmony and peace.

 But whatever be the condition of your mind,
 in what way does it reflect on you?
 It is only your self-identification with your mind
 that makes you happy or unhappy.
 Rebel against your slavery to your mind,
 see your bonds as self-created 
and break the chains of attachment and revulsion.

 Keep in mind your goal of freedom, 
until it dawns on you that you are already free, 
that freedom is not something in the distant future
 to be earned with painful efforts,
 but perennially one's own, to be used! 

Liberation is not an acquisition but a matter of courage, 
the courage to believe that you are free already 
and to act on it.

We are free 'here and now', 
It is only the mind that imagines bondage. 
Once you know your mind and its miraculous powers, 
and remove what poisoned it 
-the idea of a separate and isolated person- 
you just leave it alone to do its work
 among things for which it is well suited. 



~ Excerpts from Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj's
I AM THAT


trauma: not what you think

 





~ Gabor Mate



Friday, November 8, 2024

listen to my silence









Listen to my silence
that murmurs through these leaves
listen to this unwritten song.
.
Much is heaped between these lines
risen without mouth
silted up in the underground.
.
Listen to my paper-thin silence
that is gone with the wind
through the trees.
.
Hear my voice
at the curve of your mouth
earthlydark.
.



~ Jos Steegstra
photo by Michael Kenna

.

stretch out








Leave the familiar for a while.
Let your senses and bodies stretch out
Like a welcomed season
Onto the meadows and shores and hills.
Open up to the Roof.

Make a new water-mark on your excitement
And love.
Like a blooming night flower,
Bestow your vital fragrance of happiness
And giving
Upon our intimate assembly.

Change rooms in your mind for a day.
All the hemispheres in existence
Lie beside an equator
In your heart.

Greet Yourself
In your thousand other forms
As you mount the hidden tide and travel
Back home.

All the hemispheres in heaven
Are sitting around a fire
Chatting
While stitching themselves together
Into the Great Circle inside of
You. 




~ Hafiz


see no stranger

 
 
 

 


See no stranger has become a practice that defines my relationships. . . .
 
 Seeing no stranger begins in wonder. 
It is to look upon the face of anyone and choose to say: 
You are a part of me I do not yet know. 
Wonder is the wellspring for love. 
 
Who we wonder about determines whose stories we hear 
and whose joy and pain we share. Those we grieve with,
 those we sit with and weep with, are ultimately those we organize
 with and advocate for. 
 
When a critical mass of people come together to wonder about one another,
 grieve with one another, and fight with and for one another, we begin to build
 the solidarity needed for collective liberation and transformation
—a solidarity rooted in love. . . .

Out in the world, I notice the unconscious biases that arise in me
 when I look at faces on the street or in the news. 
To practice seeing each of them as a sister or brother or family member, 
I say in my mind: You are a part of me I do not yet know. 
 
Through conscious repetition, I am practicing orienting to the world
 with wonder and preparing myself for the possibility of connection.
 (Sometimes I do this with animals and the earth, too!) 
 
It opens me up to pay attention to their story. When their story is painful, 
I make excuses to turn back—“It’s too overwhelming” or “It’s not my place”
—but I hold the compass and remember that all I need to do is be present
 to their pain and find a way to grieve with them. 
If I can sit with their pain, I begin to ask:

What do they need?
 
 

 
Valarie Kaur
 Australian aboriginal art
 
 
 

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

to spareness


.


You lean toward nonexistence,
but have not yet become it entirely.
For this reason, you can still be praised.

The tree unleafing enters your dominion.
An early snowfall shows you abide in all things.

Your two dimensions are line and inclination.
Therefore desire,
though is incinders each mote of its object, itself is spare.

The late paintings of Turner
prove your slender depths without limit.
The beauty too of shakuhachi and cello.

"Winter darkness. Rain. No crickets singing."
-You are there, pulling hard on the rope-end.

Remembering you, I remember also compassion.
I cannot explain this.
Nor how you live in a teabowl
or in a stone that has spent a long time in a river.
Nor the way you at times can signal your own contradiction,
meaning extra, but not by much-
"Brother, can you spare a dime," one thin man asks another.

Any room, however cluttered, gestures toward you,
declaring:
"Here lives this, not that."
In mathematics, the modest "<" sign gestures toward you.

Your season is surely November,
your fruit, persimmons ripening by coldness.

Your sound a crow cry, a bus idling at night by roadside.

Without apparent effect,
and so you remind of starlight on the colors of a cow's hide.

Your proposition, like you, is simple, of interest only to the human soul:
vast reach of all that is not, and still something is.




~ Jane Hirshfield



i am






i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth's own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)



~ e.e.cummings
.from E. E. Commings:Selected Poems